Enemies Of The People

As we all know, the Media are the guardians of the First Amendment, ever vigilant in their sacred duty to protect the American people against governmental overreach. Why, the mere thought of the government illegally spying on Americans is sufficient to rouse them to ringing denunciations of the tyrants that would do such a thing! And the idea that government would ever spy on journalists, on that anointed, holy, priestly caste—blasphemy! We all know that—don’t we?

And what about that Donald Trump? Our Media watchdogs are indignantly huffing and puffing about him—well, to be honest, they do that every day—and demanding to know how dare he call them “enemies of the people?!” Here’s how and why:

On Wednesday, investigative news site Circa News broke a blockbuster story about illegal spying during the Obama years. So far, only Fox News and a handful of conservative websites have covered the bombshell news. According to Newsbusters, the big three networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — have completely omitted the story from their evening broadcasts. So have the Washington Post, the New York Times, and every other major mainstream media outlet. They’ve opted instead to cover RussiaGate fodder that continues to bear little fruit and negative news about Donald Trump.

credit: nbc

The Obama Administration had been illegally and extensively spying on Americans? Golly! Isn’t that an over-the-fold news story? Isn’t that a journalistic bombshell?

In their report, Circa revealed that ‘the National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall.’

‘More than one in 20 internet searches conducted by the National Security Agency, involving Americans, during the Obama administration violated constitutional privacy protections,’ Fox News’ Bret Baier reported near the top of Special Report Wednesday evening. ‘And that practice went on for years. Not only that, but the Obama administration was harshly rebuked by the FISA court for doing it.

Wait a minute: the FISA Court called Obama out for doing it? Isn’t that news?

Chief Washington Correspondent James Rosen cut to the chase: ‘On the day President Obama visited Los Angeles last October to yuk it up with Jimmy Kimmel, lawyers for the National Security Agency were quietly informing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that NSA had systematically violated the rights of countless Americans.’

Via Newsbusters:

‘Declassified documents, first obtained by the news site Circa, show the FISA court sharply rebuked the administration,’ Rosen noted as he began to read a passage from the FISA court’s opinion. ’With greater frequency than previously disclosed to the Court, NSA analysts had used U.S. person identifiers to query the results of internet ‘upstream’ collection, even though NSA’s Section 702 minimization procedures prohibited such queries.’ [skip]

John Soloman, one of the Circa reporters who broke the story, talked with Rosen and told him that ‘tonight, for the first time, we can say confidently that there’s been a finding that some of that espionage, that spying on Americans, actually violated the law.

So, at least a few journalists have discovered that Barack Obama and his toadies were illegally and broadly spying on Americans. And very few were willing to report it. Oh, and the FISA Court first called out the Obamites in 2011, which indicates the spying was occurring before then, and of course, continued until the day Mr. Obama left office–and beyond. But at least they weren’t spying on journalists…uh-oh:

The Obama administration spied on journalists too.

For a lucid explanation of the issues involved,visit this article by former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy. An excerpt:

At the same time, President Obama loosened restrictions to allow wider access to raw intelligence collection and wider dissemination of intelligence reports.

This geometrically increased the likelihood that classified information would be leaked — as did the Obama administration’s encouragement to Congress to demand disclosure of intelligence related to the Trump campaign (the purported Trump–Russia connection). And of course, there has been a stunning amount of leaking of classified information to the media.

Enabling of domestic spying, contemptuous disregard of court-ordered minimization procedures (procedures the Obama administration itself proposed, then violated), and unlawful disclosure of classified intelligence to feed a media campaign against political adversaries. Quite the Obama legacy.

So let us, gentle readers, review. For likely as long as he was in office, Barack Obama ran a tyranny that spied on law-abiding Americans, including journalists. He weaponized our federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and rather than protecting our nation, unleashed them on his political enemies and the American public in general. This spying has now been exposed in a substantial way, a way that cannot and should to be ignored, and the Media doesn’t consider it newsworthy. That’s not something the American people need to know. Their intellectual and moral betters have made that decision for them. You know, the enemies of the people.